


Drabbles, Oneshots, and Whatnots

by LittleInkling64



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, F/M, Family Fluff, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Portal - Freeform, Portal2, chelly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:08:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 13,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23317384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleInkling64/pseuds/LittleInkling64
Summary: Hi, this is where I doodle with words.  Cut scenes from longer fanfics, sketches, drabbles, oneshots-they're all here, pretty much.  Hope y'all enjoy.
Relationships: Chelly - Relationship
Kudos: 9





	1. Buttercream Bagels

“You know,” Wheatley was rambling again as he slid his long, spidery self into a chair at the table, “I dunno why we can’t just have something like a dozen bagels with icing or whatnot—I mean if you really think about it, it _would_ be a bit easier wouldn’t it?”

Chell started, faltering a little with the bag of icing she’d been gripping tight. She looked over the wedding cake she’d been decorating, glanced over at Wheatley, and opened her mouth to list a hundred reasons wrong with that idea, but those stratospheric blue eyes made the retort die in her throat, and she settled for a sigh instead.

It was funny how odd it’d been, adjusting to him being truly, honestly _human_. So many parts of his personality had been exaggerated or suppressed—his spontaneity encouraged to the point of ridicule being a prime example—that the him that had been a core and the him that was, well, _him_ were almost completely different animals.

This Wheatley, _her_ Wheatley, she realized with a rare smile, still retained his waterfall habit of speaking, but in the two years they’d shared a roof, he’d become a bolder version of himself. He pushed his luck, teasing her, and he did it often.

Odder still was how she’d found more and more that she didn’t particularly mind. Like today.

“You know, I had another dream, and I’m not gonna lie, this one was…it was something.”

Chell finished the last rosette, sent up a silent plea that nothing would happen to the cake, and set aside the bag of icing. At last focusing her attention completely on Wheatley, she glanced his way and saw him shift a little at the table. It was this silent interaction they always seemed to have. Whenever he was certain he had her full attention, he wiggled, settling into place as if for long tale, which to be honest, was a hallmark of any of Wheatley’s ramblings.

Chell gingerly placed the cake in the fridge before edging over to the kettle. It was a smooth and familiar dance, the mugs, the teabags, the switch on the kettle. The little kettle, green and metal, began to hum, and she sat at the table to wait and listen to Wheatley ramble.

He shifted again in his seat, a smile stretching from ear to ear as he leaned over the table and reached out a spidery hand towards her face.

“Er, Wheatley?”

He didn’t answer, but brushed her cheek with the pad of his thumb. With a self-satisfied air, he showed her a daub of icing on his thumb and licked it off.

“Yes—I can see it now. Bagels with buttercream, the alliteration is certainly very nice. Plus, you get the bonus of being able to just grab one and walk around with it, I mean cake is nice but you have the whole trouble with slicing it and all—I mean it’s not very _mobile_ , is it?”

“Cupcakes?”

“Yeah no, but that’s just the thing,” he waved his arms around in an emphatic gesture, “that’s just it, you can’t really, well—I mean, sure, you _can_ walk around with those, but they don’t have holes like bagels do, so obviously a bit lacking in the ‘hole’ department.”

The kettle began to whistle, and Chell rose to grab the mugs. Sitting back down, two mugs of piping hot, steeping tea in hand, she began tentatively, “Was your dream about bagels with icing?”

Wheatley eagerly took the mug. As for the question, his brow crinkled a little, and he adjusted his glasses.

“Oh right, yeah, the dream right—yes. Of course, I’d want to explain it to you, obviously, I mean why would I have brought it up if I didn’t intend to explain the whole, er—”

Chell stirred her tea, hesitated, then touched one of his hands, still clutched around the mug. He stilled, sucking in a quick breath and squeezing her hand.

“Was it…” she was hesitant even to ask, to interrupt such a lovely afternoon. She had a strong feeling what would follow if she asked the question, but she had to ask it. She owed him that, at the very least, after a long two years.

“Was it about…Her?” She tossed the question out, eyeing him carefully as she sipped her tea.

“Well sort of, but not exactly. I mean, it _was_ down in the labs, if you get what I’m saying—general territory where the thing happened, but had nothing to do with anything down there, really…if that makes any sort of sense.”

“Not really.”

Wheatley puffed, a little huff of air escaping his mouth, and he leaned back in his chair, settling in for a good long spin. If Chell had learned anything about this chatterbox of a man, it was that Wheatley couldn’t just spit something out—no, as inefficient as it was, Wheatley was a storyteller. He had to wind up, much like a pitcher readying to throw a ball, and when he sensed that the energy in the room had reached a crescendo, he would hurl the most important information into the fray for maximum impact.

And much as it might annoy her under time-pressed circumstances, Chell had to admit it: Wheatley had a decent sense of how to build energy, even if the twist wasn’t much to talk about.

“Right, so there I was, back in the labs—before the whole core fiasco, obviously—minding my own business, when wouldn’t you know…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so this was supposed to go into In Another Life (IAL, for short), but it got cut because it didn't fit the timeline. Hope you enjoy, and please feel free to comment/review and let me know your thoughts or if you have a drabble idea.


	2. Insomnia

“Alex, what are you doing up?” She asked, softly, so that no one else would be disturbed. A quick glance at the clock told her that it was nearly one in the morning. Normally, she’d be up three or four hours from now, at not quite such an ungodly hour, to begin baking for the day.

Alex however, had nothing even nearing a good reason to be up.

“Oh, sorry. I just couldn’t fall asleep.” The younger girl offered conversationally, though Chell was beginning to catch on to her rather cheery way of hiding when she was upset. Alex rarely let her emotions show, in such a way that Chell was becoming more and more convinced that it wasn’t simply a reflection of a private nature.

“You really should be in bed though, not in the kitchen.”

The younger girl nodded slowly, but Chell could see the slightest change of expression in her face, the slightest dip in her good humor. In a flash, it was gone, as if it had never been, and Alex suggested a glass of warm milk with a hopeful look at Chell.

She could hardly resist Alex’s puppy eyes, which although not quite centered on Chell’s gaze, were nonetheless quite effective. She set about heating up a small saucepan of milk on the stove, while Alex settled herself easily at the table. She softly chattered away, as if the whole reason she’d wanted milk was purely to keep Chell in the kitchen long enough to hold a decent conversation.

Alex had learned that Chell was an excellent listener, even to Alex’s often absurd trains of thought.

“Do you think that caterpillars know they’ll be butterflies when there in their little cocoons?”

Chell stirred the milk thoughtfully for a moment, then settled for a non-committal sort of grunt.

“And do you think—”

Chell deftly poured a stream of piping hot milk into a mug and set it before Alex.

“Drink your milk.”

Alex opened her mouth as if to speak, then seemed to think better of it. Instead she drank her milk, and finishing, she slipped silently off to bed.

-

It happened again a few nights later. But this time, when Chell came downstairs, she’d found Alex crying. They were the quietest tears she’d ever seen. Chell approached the table, making the floorboard beneath her foot creak ever so slightly, and the younger girl quickly sucked in a breath.

With uncanny composure—almost as if she’d never been crying—Alex said, “Hello?”

When Chell didn’t answer, Alex sighed. “Hi, Miss Chell.”

Alex had anxiously avoided calling her “mum”, as Wheatley had encouraged her to do. But Chell couldn’t exactly blame her; neither of them were in current possession of a biological mother, and Alex didn’t trust most adults out of principle.

She hadn’t the slightest idea of what a “mum” should look like.

But Chell hadn’t raised Sophie for nearly eighteen years for nothing.

“Alex, what’s this really about?”

Alex was silent, and for a second, C. wondered if she had fallen asleep at the table. She hadn’t. She was staring at Chell, her face a mask of mute terror, as if she couldn’t bear to say it, but had to say all the same—

“I want it to be real.”

And Chell understood. Because if there was anything more terrifying than _that place_ , it was the sinking, horrible feeling that all of this—this paradise, this haven, this _heaven_ —was nothing more than a dream. Nothing more than a desperate construction of the imagination to provide some escape from the horror that had been _that place_. She’d had the same nightmare herself more than once. Horrible, viciously cruel scenes that were so real as to convince her that all of this was nothing but a placating simulation.

More than nightmares of _testing_ , more than the scars that still marred her skin, more than the horrible flashbacks, the recurring dream that it simply wasn’t real had made her wake up _terrified_ time and time again, grasping for Wheatley’s hand, desperate to convince herself that it _was_ real.

“I don’t…I-I don’t want to go to sleep.” Alex’s breathing was ragged now, and the tears were beginning to drip. “B-because I don’t-I don’t want to, to—”

“To wake up where none of this is real.” Chell finished for her.

Alex nodded, trembling in every limb. Chell wordlessly pulled the younger girl into a tight embrace. Slender hands curled around her neck as Chell hoisted Alex up and just held her close. Alex was getting a bit too leggy to be picked up anymore—proper nutrition had begun to give her a rather weak version of a growth spurt—but she was still light enough to be manageable.

Chell let out a soft breath. “Do you want to know a secret?”

“Not really, but…ok.” Alex said, muffled, from Chell’s shoulder.

“I get scared too. I have…I have nightmares about that _place_ , and it’s been a long, long time since I came here.”

Alex pulled back, her brow furrowed.

“But Mr. Wheatley said you weren’t afraid of anything.”

Chell felt the sudden and extreme desire to laugh. She thought better of it, however, and quickly packed the laugher away. She set Alex down.

“Everyone’s afraid of something, Alex. But you can’t just stop living because you’re afraid. Now come on. I’ll tuck you into bed.”

-

The next morning, while Alex was demolishing a stack of pancakes, she felt Miss Chell’s hand on her arm. She knew, because Miss Chell always smelled like vanilla and butter.

Tap taap tap. Tap. Tap taap. Tap taap tap tap.

And Alex smiled, a little unrelieved tension finally melting away.

This was _real_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit angsty, yes, but there's some fluff to balance it out. Hope you enjoyed.


	3. Duet

It began with the little robot Alex found in Uncle Garret’s workshop. In those first few days, she didn’t dare sit by herself for more than a minute. The whisper of humming machinery and the distant echo of screams would fill her ears, and she’d run to her little cot in Sophie’s room and bury her head beneath the covers to make it stop. It never did.

But the feeling of her dad and mum’s arms around her _did_ help.

Alex couldn’t bring herself to call them that—not yet. For now, it was still Mr. Wheatley and Miss Chell—said with fondness—but not dad and mum. Maybe…maybe one day. But they were alright with that. Alex got the feeling that they understood, somehow.

So some days, when they couldn’t stay with her at home, they brought her along with them on their errands. They wouldn’t make her talk to people—or at least, Chell wouldn’t—but Wheatley sometimes lingered with neighbors, chattering eagerly away while Alex tugged on the hem of his shirt, begging him silently to finish. Alex traveled to the Mr. Arron’s store many times, or as Wheatley liked to call it, “the grocer’s”, to the neighbor’s houses, to the school, to a dozen places that bought bread from Miss Chell.

So when such a day rolled around when Chell had to visit the shop and took Alex along, she entered the shop with a feeling of warm familiarity wrapped around her like a cape. It didn’t smell _lovely_ , exactly, this shop, but it was interesting enough. Dried herbs hung in a corner, sending a soothing fragrance through the whole front room, and Alex could hear the sleepy hum of a refrigerator against a wall. It was too lazy and droopy to feel threatening, even if it did remind her of…well, something much more threatening.

Alex blew a bored, quiet raspberry as Miss Chell leafed efficiently through the catalog that Mr. Aaron had on the store counter. Mr. Garret came entered the room on antsy feet that made the floorboards creak.

“You alright there, Jay?”

“Yeah, I’ve got it Mr. Garret.”

Alex had met Jay for the first time some time ago. He worked in the store, earning pocket money by running the counter for Mr. Aaron during school breaks. Though Jay thought Alex odd, she managed to win him over with her manners and obliging nature. Or perhaps it had something to do with the protective glares she could sense Chell sending on her behalf.

Regardless, Alex liked him well enough, and she was well aware of the fact that Sophie had a _very_ strong liking for him. She didn’t quite understand the mechanics of it, but she could grasp the basic concept: Sophie liked Jay in a special sort of way that was different from how she liked Alex or Miss Chell or Mr. Wheatley. Alex couldn’t well blame her, he was nice enough, especially when he could tell she was bored:

“Hey, Alex.”

Alex followed the sound of his voice and approached the counter. “Yes?”

“You wanna check out something really cool in the back?”

Alex paused, tilted her head. “Okay.” She turned in Miss Chell’s direction. “Can I?”

Alex was baffled by the whole concept of asking permission. All her life, she’d been told what to do, and if she wanted to do something for her own pleasure or enjoyment, she wasn’t accustomed to asking for a scientist’s permission. Mostly because they’d say no.

It was a wild and unruly concept for her brain to master that she had to ask Mr. Wheatley and Miss Chell for permission to do things, even if they were likely to say yes. Take for example the time she’d eaten cake for breakfast. There’d been a tidbit left in the fridge, and under her usual parameters of logic, if no one told her no or caught her, then it was fair game.

She was very surprised, then, when she got a bit of a scolding when Mr. Wheatley and Miss Chell had come into the kitchen to find her mouth stained with frosting and her plate littered with crumbs at seven in the morning. She’d slowly begun to discover that Wheatley and Chell said no for an entirely different reason than the scientists did; Miss Chell told her she couldn’t have cake for breakfast because it would make her sick. (That prediction was _quite_ correct.) Mr. Wheatley told her not to play on the old stone wall over by the town hall, because she might fall. (She’d gotten quite the scrape on her knees falling off.)

They said no to protect her, not because they didn’t want to deal with her.

“Mmm-hmm.” Chell made an approving sound and Alex took that to mean yes.

In the very back of the shop, where it smelled like wooden shelves and faintly like metal, Jay led Alex to the very, _very_ back. There was something there, sitting on the floor, that was familiar and yet strange to her mind. But it was electronic, she knew that much, and if it was out here, under the good warm sun, then it couldn’t be anything to fear.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Garret took out all the bul—er, uh the dangerous parts years ago. Thought you might have some fun messing with it. Though I’m not sure it’ll do anything. It kinda just sits there now.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll let you know when your mom’s done.”

And he left Alex alone with the strange thing.

As soon as he’d left, Alex touched the casing of the thing and found it impossibly smooth—something made in a factory probably—with two long grooves running parallel from the top to bottom. Laying her slender fingers along the grooves, she pulled, but no parts came loose. It was sealed tight. For all she knew, perhaps it was just a large electronic egg of a thing whose only purpose was to change colors. It would at least explain why it was humming with electricity. _But what is it?_

Alex hesitated, then sent a jolt of communication through the thing’s system. A sort of general wake-up call, if you will.

“Hello-o?” The hum deepened in intensity, and the innards of the strange thing whirred to life. “Is anyone there?” It called in a sweet, curious voice.

“Well, I’m here.” Alex answered politely, even if the thing was clearly a robot. It felt…familiar, as if perhaps it was related to, well… But it was something she’d never encountered before in all her life. And it spoke so sweetly and politely, that she couldn’t help but feel at ease.

“I’m different.” The little robot said mildly, as if this were a normal turn of conversation.

“Different from what?” Alex asked.

“Don’t make lemonade.” It answered, preferring another non sequitur to addressing her question.

“Why not?” Alex sat cross-legged, and her brow furrowed in confusion. “Lemonade’s very nice. I’ve only had it once, but it’s still very nice.”

“Do-o you sing?” The robot asked.

“Well, not really, but I could try, if you’d like.”

A sudden flow of information burst into her mind. Notes and rhythm, measure and pace—all of them flooded her brain with a sudden understanding.

“Ohhhhh. That’s pretty. Let’s sing that.”

-

Chell watched with a keen but casual eye as Jay wrapped up her groceries in a paper sack. Jay might be a very nice kid, but at the moment, he was currently the cause of much strife for Sophie, and for that, she kept her eye on him. He seemed to feel the weight of her gaze, stern and tactical beneath an unassuming guise. He began to sweat. _Good_ , Chell thought.

“Here you are, Mrs. Newell. H-have a nice day.” He stuttered a little but managed to pull himself together. He pushed the bag of groceries towards her. “I’ll just go get Alex. She’s probably—”

“ _Cara bella, cara mia bella…_ ”

Chell froze. Jay turned towards the back of the shop.

“I think it’s—”

“ _Mia bambina, oh ciel! Che la stima! Che la stima! Oh cara mia, addio!_ ”

“—coming from back there.” Jay pointed uselessly as Chell flipped up the counter divider and ran to the back of the shop. As she came nearer, the words separated themselves into two voices—one modulated and pure, one human and ill-practiced but sweet.

“ _La mia bambina cara, perche non passi lontana? Si, lontana da Scienza!_ ”

Chell found Alex sitting on the floor, her chest puffed out and happily singing with a turret. A _turret_ , for heaven’s sake.

“Alex?”

“ _Cara—_ oh.” Alex suddenly stopped, and the turret also halted.

Jay came behind Chell and awkwardly began, “Uh, Alex, your mom’s—”

“Thank you, Jay.” Chell winced. She hadn’t meant it to come out so harsh, but the sight of the turret put her on edge. She still couldn’t believe Garret had kept it all these years.

“I’m coming, Miss Chell.” Alex rose and started towards Chell, then stopped to hug the spherical robot. “Bye, little fella.”

“Goodnight.” The turret replied without any sort of inflection to indicate that it had heard Alex’s response. Its little wings folded neatly into its spherical body and the glowing red eye went dim.

Alex came and took her hand.

“Did you know, I never knew a robot could sing.”

Memories flashed behind Chell’s eyes. Happy and frightened alike.

“Huh.” Was all she said.

They went home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ever wondered what happened to that turret Garret brought back to Eaden during Blue Sky? Yeah, me too.


	4. What's in a Name?

Dr. Dillon came out smiling. Wheatley’d been anxiously alternating between tapping his foot on the floor and chewing on his nails—which were becoming shorter by the minute. When she came out, his jumped to his feet, standing tall and unabashed of his absurd height.

He eyed Dr. Dillon nervously, his breath held in till his nearly couldn’t for a second longer—

Dr. Dillon smiled wider. “Go meet your little girl.”

Something warm and fierce burst behind his sternum, and Wheatley laughed aloud.

“I knew it!” He ran into the room.

Chell was tired, but her eyes were bright and there was a warm sunshine behind her smile. He gasped to see the little bundle in her arms and knelt beside the bed.

“Oh,” he began, then stopped, at a loss for words. For once, he wasn’t quite sure what to say. “Hello…hello there.”

His newborn daughter stirred for a second, but her eyes remained sleepily shut. She yawned, the pink of her toothless gum peeking out, and then smacked her lips gently. He loved every movement, every sweet twitch of her tiny fingers—how was it possible for a person to have such _tiny_ fingers—and he knew without a shred of doubt that no matter what happened he would go through _anything_ for this kid. For _his_ kid.

And she didn’t even have a proper name yet. No time like the present though.

“Hello there…” his mind scrambled through his memory, searching wildly for the discussions they’d had for names and things—surely he could remember at least one. This poor kid needed a name before they got too far along or else they’d be stuck with some shoddy term like “hey you” or “the Newell kid”. He might not be a-a—astrophysicist or something, but even he knew that a name was something terribly important.

After all, hadn’t his own name been the only thing he could keep throughout it all?

So…right, names. He began again.

“Hello there, little…er, well, little…” something popped into his mind with a startling clarity, “…hello there, Sophie.”

“That’s pretty.” Chell murmured softly, a drowsy smile on her face. “Where did you come up with that one?”

Wheatley was quiet for a second, trying to grasp the fleeting feeling that accompanied the name. Something was tickling at his brain, teasing him with something just out of reach. Like a memory wrapped in cotton candy.

“Not sure…it just sort of…came to me.”

“Well, good job. Much better than Bartholomew.”

He gave a wry smile. They’d argued about that one, since he’d thought it would be impressive for a little tyke—bit of a head start, as far as first impressions go—and Chell thought it was a bit of a mouthful. She won, obviously. The closer they’d gotten to this day, the more irritable she’d become, and he didn’t dare make her any grumpier.

Little Sophie, hearing her parents’ voices and eager to be a part of the party, managed to muster up the coordination to open her eyes for a few seconds. Bright, practically stratospheric blue eyes met his own matching gaze for the barest moment, then closed. Apparently little Sophie decided that it was enough excitement for the moment, because she quickly fell asleep.

Dr. Dillon came back in and beamed at all of them.

“You want to hold her so mom can rest?”

Wheatley nearly jumped.

“I mean, are you sure? Me?”

“Yes, you.” Dr. Dillon grinned, and Chell gently patted his hand with a free hand, holding Sophie with the other.

“Well,” he swallowed, “well okay then.”

Chell handed Sophie over, and he took his daughter in his arms for the first time.

“Well, wow,” he looked down at the little pink, wrinkled face, quietly sleeping, “well, you’re awful, well, _small._ But that’s okay! That’s okay—because, because…because you’ll grow, I think. And if you’re anything like your mum, then you’ll be just—oh, well you’ll—you’ll just be great. And obviously you’ve got my good looks, so with your mom’s brains, you should be just fine.”

Little Sophie smiled.

“Yeah…yeah you’re gonna be great.”

_Sophie, Sophie, Sophie_ , where had he heard that before?

“My little Sophie.”

* * *

_“’You stole me,’ Sophie said. ‘I did not steal you very much,’ said the BFG, smiling gently. ‘After all, you is only a tiny little girl.’”_

_Alex laughed._

_“Read it again, please.”_

_So Wheatley did._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What can I say? I'm a sucker for fluff. I do not own Roald Dahl's The BFG or any quotes therein.


	5. The Comedian

He loved making people laugh. It was a simple thing, stupid and foolish and pointless at times, but it made him feel better. Besides, if there was anything he’d learned over his twenty-seven years of living, it was this: people are intimidated by intelligence.

Not so much with humor.

If you entered the room with a PhD in AI software engineering when people barely knew what that was, people tended to get quiet. They tended to edge around to the other sides of the room, towards the less intelligent, the more relatable, the more familiar people in the room. Once upon a time, he’d have liked to shout at them, _can’t you see I’m friendlier than a psychologist, but you’re still talking to him! I won’t diagnose you on the spot, at least!_

But then came the magical moment. It’d happened at one of these company soirees—nice word, that, he was always trying to improve his vocabulary. He’d been talking with—Michael Hutchinson, was it?—and the poor man was already just a bit tipsy and forgot to introduce him to the group of people they were chatting with. Michael had excused himself unceremoniously to go the bathroom shortly after, leaving good ol’ Stephen Smythe with a couple of strangers.

Or perhaps…leaving him with a rare and magnificent opportunity. And it was standing there, grasping the thread of conversation, using his well-oiled jaw to keep it moving, that he realized that he could tell these people _anything_ about himself. They knew nothing beyond his name. He could tell them he dressed as a bright blue cockatoo for children’s birthday parties if he wanted.

A mischief he hadn’t felt since he was six thrummed through him, and he had to resist the urge to chuckle.

“And,” the man he was talking to took an intervening sip of champagne, “what is it you said you did? Dr. Hutchinson said something about a PhD—”

“What? Oh no no, you’ve got me pegged all wrong, mate.” He tagged the word at the end for effect, even though he’d been living in America for nearly three years and hadn’t said it more than twice during all that time. “I’m a comedy guy myself. Yeah, got called in just for this, you know, lighten the mood a bit.”

The woman perked up, stopped staring into the distance, and shot him a look of moderate interest. The man lowered his champagne glass, raised his eyebrows, “Really?”

Stephen made a scoffing sort of raspberry noise, “Pfft, ‘course!”

The woman got a strange sort of gleam in her eye. It was not a friendly gleam.

“Well then, get up there and tell a joke.” She gestured lazily to the small platform stage and the lonely microphone.

Stephen swallowed. She’d called his bluff; he had two options: either get up there and fumble his way through a joke to prove he was who he said he was, or laugh awkwardly, tell the truth, and hope he never met the two of them again. To be honest, the latter sounded attractive at the moment. He knew the minute he stepped up on that stage—combined with his already ludicrous height (well over six feet)—he’d be the center of attention.

Stephen swallowed again. “Yeah…yeah, alright, get everybody in a good mood with a little warm-up act.”

He smiled, hoping it didn’t look forced or as his mother had once said, “it’s like you’ve got a boiled egg in your mouth and you don’t know what to do with it”. A fleeting memory of his graduation photo the day he got his doctorate flashed before his eyes— _boiled egg smile_ , despite his best efforts.

He walked to the stage, hesitated, then hopped up. _Yeah, no stairs, do it with some style instead._ He grabbed the microphone, and it squealed with feedback. Everyone winced, and of course, with his own impulsive self close to the surface, he said the first thing that came to mind.

“Oh G—it’s like a baby whale just _died_ in there! What kind of a microphone is this?”

Once people had stopped holding their ears, they began to titter nervously. Was this some kind of announcement?

“Can’t imagine they’d have made one with a baby whale inside it on _purpose_ , obviously a design flaw if you ask me. I mean, where’d you put the water? Anyways,” he adjusted the microphone, brought it up a little, eased himself into his spot onstage, “how are we doing tonight?”

-

After that miraculous, crazy, _fantastic_ night, something had awakened with a red-hot edge inside him. Stephen Smythe would never dream of considering himself the best comedian in the world. But if the smiles and chuckles and happy looks were any sort of indicator, he was far from the worst. Even if he didn’t make them _laugh_ —his bumbling, awkward, comedic rambling had made people _happy_.

And perhaps more than that, perhaps more dangerously, he found himself craving those smiles and snatches of laughter like a man desperate for water in the desert. It filled him with a floating, delirious euphoria: _People like me. They like_ me! Whatever fuddy-duddy, boring, scholarly _thing_ he’d been before was something people had always noticed but never really _noticed_. Heads turned when he walked into a room (mostly because of his height), and when it came to his field, he was well known. But people liked and noticed him sort of like you notice the kid in the lane who swallowed a set of pliers; someone crazy and wild that you could say you knew but would never dream of talking to, let alone having lunch with. (If you really did end up knowing a kid who swallowed pliers, then this would be a doubly bad idea.)

But this personality he had constructed—he was already thinking of names for it, like a stage name ( _Wheatley_ in particular caught his eye)—was something people noticed in the best possible way. People he’d always waved to and who had never waved back were suddenly asking him to “do the voice” during lunch in the breakroom. “Do the thing,” they’d say, and he knew precisely what they meant. Do the thing that people like. The thing that was a show he put on.

But it didn’t really matter, did it? This whole not-really-Stephen business? After all, lots of people at work loved the film actors not because of who they were but because of who they could become. What did it matter what kind of a person they’d been as a tyke, if their whole job was to be whoever they wanted and to be really, _really_ good at it?

So he pushed harder. The smiles and the laughter and the attention were like a drug, filling some bottomless well deep inside him. Except the well had a leak, and the more overflowing with confidence and pride he became, the quicker it would all run out, leaving him high and dry. Leaving him more desperate than ever before for this happy buzz, this thing of _you’re accepted, people like you, people care about you, people miss you when you’re not around_.

The desperation began to show. He got an orange slip on his desk one day, recommending that he fulfill his neglected testing quota. He’d never gotten such a notice before, despite seeing colleagues get them regularly. He’d never needed to; his work was top-notch, thorough, and excellent. He was considered _essential personnel_.

Until now.

He showed up to the testing track and was taken down to a long row of people in tanks and _maybe this wasn’t such a good idea_ but it was alright, they were just going to do some basic procedure things. He stepped in the tank and _is that gas and oh G—_ and everything went blank…

-

He woke to bright fluorescent lights, shining a little too cheerily down on his sad eyes—no, eye. Funny, he could have sworn there were two, perhaps rubbing them would help—wait, where were his arms? For that matter, where were his legs? They must have put him through a _heck_ of a drug cocktail as a part of the…funny, he couldn’t remember what exactly.

There was a man standing in front of him, much taller to his own point of view than he was used to— _huh that’s funny_ , but he couldn’t imagine or remember _why_ …

“Hello, I.D. Core.”

“ _Pfft_ , that’s not my name, mate.” Where did that come from? Why did his voice sound so _strange_ compared to the other man?

The man seemed flustered.

“What is it, then?”

He opened his mouth—funnily enough, no mouth either—and nothing came out.

“Well I’m…well of course I—er, hang on, that’s not right. Erm…no…”

“That’s alright, that’s alright,” the other man seemed to be grasping for control of the conversation, “see, I.D. cores like yourself don’t have names, you have number sequences. For example, yours is 628318530—”

“Like pi twice.” The man looked baffled, so he elaborated, “You know, 3.1415—that whole thing, but multiplied. By two.”

“How on earth did you know that?”

“Haven’t the slightest idea.” He was struck with a sudden and inexplicable boredom, as if any enthusiasm for continuing his current thought had vanished like dust sucked into a vacuum. “Back to the name thing, I’ve got an idea for one, if you don’t mind.”

“Uh,” the man flipped through his clipboard papers wildly, “I don’t, ah, have the protocol for that—”

“Oh that’s fine, I’ll just tell you, and we can vote on it, yeah? Democracy. Lovely word. Very nice.”

“Alright.” The man appeared to have given up and sat heavily on a nearby stool.

“Right, now this might sound crazy, but hear me out: _Wheatley_.”

The man looked relieved, but he—Wheatley, rather—wasn’t sure why.

“Wheatley, right…” the man scribbled. “That works.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had a brainwave the other day: what if Wheatley wasn't quite such a moron? What if the bumbling personality we all know and love was all that remained of a man who once was? This idea really captured my attention, and sooner or later I'll write a short backstory drabble about Caroline too. Hope y'all enjoyed.


	6. Awakening

It was a long, _long_ time before Alex woke up. Sophie wasn’t exactly sure what it was like to be plugged into a computer, but if it Alex’s behavior was any sort of indicator, it probably took a lot out of you.

From the moment she’d first disconnected to the moment they’d gotten home, all along the long walk home, she had never once stirred. Sophie had checked her pulse nearly five times; she was alive, simply sleeping like the dead. Although to be honest, Sophie had never really liked the phrase.

Everyone was exhausted when they got back, so for the moment, they plopped Alex back on the couch until they could call Dr. Dillon. And there Alex slept, her face squished into the couch cushions, uncaring, while Sophie and her parents set about getting things settled.

Sophie, for her own part, was sweaty from running with GLaDOS’s heavy metal core and still felt sticky even though it had long ago dried in the freezing temperatures of the Central AI Chamber. Her coat—or rather, her dad’s coat—still lay heavy on her shoulders. Her own coat was wrapped around Alex, and fabric of the back of it was a bit worse for wear near her neck, where the plug had been inserted.

She ignored the urge to shower and knelt next to the younger girl. Sophie gently adjusted Alex’s position, turning her flat on her back, tilting her head so her airwaves would be clear—but there wasn’t much else she could do until Dr. Dillon—

“What in _sweet heaven’s_ name have you been _doing_?” Dr. Dillon burst through the back door with all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop. “Good _glory_ , Chell, trouble just can’t leave you alone, can it?”

Sophie’s mom smiled wanly.

Dr. Dillon bent over Alex.

“Oh sweet—” Dr. Dillon broke off and rifled around in her bag, slipped her stethoscope around her neck, and listened. She said nothing, but Sophie could see her shoulders ease down into a more relaxed position.

“Well, she’s breathing at least. Seems to be clean knocked out, but she doesn’t seem to have a lump on her head. And the rest of you don’t look much better, but at least you’re awake. What happened?”

Sophie glanced at her mom, who glanced at Wheatley, then back at Dr. Dillon. Chell shook her head.

Dr. Dillon’s face hardened into a frown. “It’s got to do with that d—that place down there, doesn’t it.”

It wasn’t a question, but Sophie’s mom still nodded.

“It’s best if you don’t ask, Dr. Dillon.”

-

So Dr. Dillon didn’t ask. But she told Uncle Aaron, who told Uncle Garret, who told a bunch more people in Eaden. And things began to appear on the doorstep, like raspberry jam and flour and once, a stuffed Vortigaunt. Its soft, plushy curves were a great deal softer than the pictures Sophie had been shown in class. She put it in Alex’s arms as she slept, but the younger girl didn’t wake.

And though Dr. Dillon didn’t ask outright, her curiosity was evident.

“I’m guessing she just needs rest. She’ll wake up in her own good time. Of course, it’s pretty near-impossible to know without…”

“I know. Thanks, Dr, Dillon.”

“Well,” Dr. Dillon patted her empty pockets awkwardly, “I suppose I’ll check in tomorrow.”

-

In the end, it was the radio that did it. It had been a lazy Sunday afternoon, and Sophie was lying on her stomach on her bedspread, reading. As per usual, Alex was asleep on a cot they had permanently borrowed from the back room of Uncle Aaron’s store until they could find a proper bed with “wood and all that”, as Sophie’s dad said it.

It was peaceful, quiet. Still, even. The radio fizzled, and her head shot up. She’d forgotten dad was DJing on Foxglove this afternoon, and she rushed to turn on the radio.

“—right, so here we are with another classic ladies and gents and…well, smaller ladies and gents, I suppose—” Sophie smiled.

“—anyways, here it is. By a group of insects I believe? Not sure how that works, but there you have it.”

Sophie grinned as her dad rambled on.

“—right, right, here’s the tune. Enjoy, I suppose, I mean, nobody’s really forcing you, but yeah, here you have it.”

Soft guitar floated out of the little radio’s speakers, sweet and gentle.

“ _Here comes the sun, do ‘n’ do-do, here comes the sun and I say…it’s all right…”_

Alex croaked, and Sophie nearly dropped the radio. She set it on the bed and crouched by Alex’s cot. The younger girl twitched, taking in one shuddering breath, then another.

She grasped blindly at the blankets, felt the stuffed Vortigaunt, and stilled a moment. Her fingers squeezed the soft plush of the fabric, her knuckles nearly white with the strain.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, Alex. I’m right here, right here, see?” Sophie touched the younger girl’s hand. Alex shrunk back, curling onto her side. Her body shook with shudders.

After a minute or two, she seemed to calm, and she turned back over, facing Sophie.

“Sophie?” Alex squeezed the Vortigaunt doll.

“Yes. Yes, I’m here.”

-

Sophie dialed.

“Dad—you’ll _never_ guess what happened…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something fun I kinda wanted to put in In Another Life, but didn't. Hope y'all enjoy. Btw, releasing a sequel to In Another Life sometime soon, my profile on Fanfic.net has more up-to-date details if you're interested.


	7. The Great Cake Incident

They were sitting on the couch, mugs of tea and coffee in hand, and chatting when the subject of Alex’s birthday came up. Sometime in the months following her awakening, Chell had taken it upon herself to sit the little girl down and decide when her birthday would be. After much patient explaining of what a birthday celebration looked like and when Chell and Wheatley’s were, Alex had decided that she would like to celebrate her birthday on the first day of Summer.

She’d taken to the warm summer weather with an enthusiasm that surprised Chell; even in the most baking heat, Alex could be found outside doing anything—it didn’t matter what—as long as it was outside. It was finding Alex outside one day, nearly burnt to crisp by sunburn, that a memory popped into Chell’s mind with a sudden vividness. — _staying outside through the spring and the summer and the fall…even the bitter cold winter_ _she could be found outside with a reddened, streaming nose and windbitten cheeks if only because she couldn’t bear to be inside. Who knew how long this sky, this sun—to bright to be real—would last—_

And so Chell quietly ushered Alex back inside and rubbed the green aloe vera gel on her neck and face and arms without comment. Some things went beyond words—if anyone knew that, it was her. Sometimes she felt that for all of Alex’s tender age, she understood that more than she let on.

Alex bounced in her spot next to Wheatley, jostling his mug of tea (it was alright really, since he’d finished most of it), and announced confidently that she knew what she wanted for her birthday.

“That was quick.” Sophie remarked innocently and took a sip of tea. For a brief moment, Alex shot her adopted sister an exasperated frown. She recovered quickly, however, and went on:

“I’d like a birthday cake.”

“Well sure, I mean, pretty important birthday tradition and all that, but I don’t suppose you want a present er—”

“Nope.” Alex shook her head, then hesitated. “Well—no, just cake. I don’t have to go find it, right?”

“What do you mean?” Chell finished her mug of coffee—black with a little sugar—and set it on the floor next to her chair.

“Oh…oh.” Alex seemed to retreat into her own thoughts for a minute. Then she giggled. “It’s just that—well, it’s sort of a funny story. Maybe you’d like to hear it?”

“Is this what I think it is…?” Wheatley began, but Alex shushed him grandly.

“Hang on, you’ve got to let me tell it!” Alex took a deep breath, wiggled her fingers dramatically, and began, “I like to call it ‘The Great Cake Heist’.”

“I thought it was ‘The Great Cake Incident’?”

“ _Shh_ , I’m trying to tell it.”

-

_She was sitting on the floor with a particularly droll volume of Plato when her giant friend poked his head in._

 _“_ Psst! _Alex!” He was whispering, but not very well. “You’ll never guess—but guess what I found in the staff room!”_

_“What?”_

_“Cake!”_

_“Cake?” Alex blinked. “What’s cake?”_

_“What?” Mr. Wheatley sounded confused now. “Surely you’ve heard of cake before!”_

_“It’s a food, isn’t it?” Alex closed her book and slid onto her stomach to prop her head up with her hands._

_“It’s the best kind of food! And yours truly just happens to know that they’ve got loads leftover from some big board meeting. If we leave now, we can be there and back with cake in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”_

_“What on earth does_ that _mean?”_

_“You know…I’m not entirely sure. Not sure why somebody would want to shake a lamb’s for any reason, to be honest, seems a bit mean, ‘specially if you’re doing it in front of the poor fellow. Rude, isn’t it? Remind him of what he hasn’t got.”_

_“That’s besides the point though. Point is, you and me could go get some cake, and you could try some. And it wouldn’t take long at all.”_

_Alex hesitated. She loved doing anything with Mr. Wheatley—reading, talking—but she’d overhead the Child Test Coordinator say more than once that she was on a Very Strict Diet and wasn’t allowed anything unusual. But surely just a_ little _cake would be alright?_

_“Okay, let’s do it!”_

_Alex sat up, stood, and shelved the book. Taking Mr. Wheatley’s long-fingered, bony hand, she followed him down the many twisting hallways. Much against her will, her brain memorized the route—that was the problem with a good memory, you couldn’t say, “hey buddy, you don’t have remember that” because your brain, being the congenial fellow it was, would just ignore you._

_After two lefts, three rights, and at least one u-turn, they made it to the staff room. Heading inside, Alex was met with a wave of unfamiliar scents, poor and unappealing and yet so wonderfully new and curious. Something that smelled like her daily fish oil pill mixed with something else that smelled sweet and buttery and whole concoction curled under her nose affectionately. Alex wrinkled her nose, trying to block out the smell._

_“Right! Here it is. Pound cake, I think. Ooh! It’s lemon! Fantastic, I love lemon—here, try a bite of this.”_

_Mr. Wheatley touched her hand, opening it, and set something soft and crumbly in her palm. Alex pinched it slightly, feeling the crumby texture compress under her fingers. After another moment’s hesitation, she popped the morsel in her mouth and chewed._

_Flavors that she had never before tasted—buttery and sweet and that flavor Mr. Wheatley called “lemon”—rolled over her tongue. Alex closed her eyes, lost in the sheer ecstasy of a piece of lemon pound cake._

_“Oh, hang on, here’s a proper slice. This one’s got icing on it, see—er, well, you can taste it well enough. Not much to it, this icing, certainly on the lower end of the icing scale, but not bad, not bad…”_

_There was the crinkly sound of paper and Alex found something thin and paper put into her hands. There was a weight to this paper thing, and Alex explored with her fingers to find a much larger piece of cake—an entire slice—resting on top. On one end, the cake was unusually sticky, and some of the stickiness came away onto her hands. Without even thinking, she licked her finger._

_This sticky stuff was even better—almost too sweet—and altogether a different flavor than the cake from earlier. She wanted to eat the sticky thing and the cake together and nearly took a bite, but Mr. Wheatley interrupted her:_

_“C’mon, let’s get back before somebody comes in here. We’ll take just a little with us.”_

_Alex nodded, and they made their way back to the room without incident. Well, without_ major _incident was more accurate, since they ran into Mark, the other janitor in the wing along the way. And of course, he wanted some cake too, so Wheatley bought his silence with location of the staff room._

_But other than Mark, they arrived back at Alex’s little room without incident. Once there, they settled in on the floor and ate happily._

_Perhaps it was Alex’s imagination, but did the cake taste sweeter somehow, more lemony, now that she was sitting here with her giant friend?_

-

“I think I remember the bit with the pound cake. But what happened after that?”

“Well,” Alex rocked back in her chair, and Chell nearly laughed at her comically wide-eyed expression, “the Child Test whasit—I never did learn her name since she only let me call her ma’am—was absolutely _furious_ with me. You should have seen it, she was absolutely livid!”

“Not a very happy ending then, huh.”

“Not always, no.” Alex went quiet for a second. “But I think it was nice to have cake anyways.”

The family went quiet.

“So can my birthday cake be lemon?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When life gives you lemons, you make lemon pound cake.


	8. A New 'Do

Sophie peeked over the top of Alex’s head. In front of Alex, Sophie’s mom sat quietly as Alex’s nimble fingers wove her dark hair into elaborate braids. Sophie herself was struggling a little, finding it difficult to weave Alex’s short hair. Her own locks were currently braided back into skillful strands.

Sophie leaned back for a second and hesitated. After a moment, she unraveled the braid in progress and finger-combed the strands.

“Sorry Alex, still getting the hang of it.”

“That’s okay.” Alex paused, reaching back to squeeze Sophie’s hand. “It takes a while to really get it.” She giggled. “It probably took me longer, since I can’t really see how it looks.”

“I guess so.” Sophie smiled, even though Alex couldn’t see it.

Alex finished, wrangling a rubber band from her wrist onto the end of mom’s hair. Feeling the result with methodical hands, Alex nodded to no one in particular.

“Feels good to me. What do you think, Sophie?”

Sophie looked. Her mother looked feminine, even sweet without the dangerous glint to her steel-grey eyes. Having been on the receiving end of that glare more than once, Sophie knew first-hand that her mother could go from sweet to sharp in a matter of minutes, if the situation demanded. Say, for example, being caught sneaking out after curfew.

Honestly, there wasn’t _really_ anywhere for her to have gone, being little old Eaden. Still, trying to explain that it was _only_ a midnight get together with at least a dozen people from her class, not just one particular boy, did not go over well with mom. Or dad for that matter. Dad nearly blew a gasket at her flimsy attempt at an explanation.

Her dad came into the room. Alex had learned to recognize his particular gait and footfalls—all of theirs’, to be exact—so her head instantly turned in his direction.

“What are you girls up to?”

“Mr. Wheatley come look!” Alex still hadn’t quite adjusted to calling Sophie’s dad, well, “dad”. Sophie didn’t push her on it, but at times it confused her.

But then again, things concerning that place still confused her in a way that she knew she would never quite understand. She had nightmares like the rest of them, sure, but she was able to wake up with the firm sense that this was home and where she belonged.

She wasn’t quite sure if Alex, or even her mom and dad, felt that way in those first few minutes of wakefulness after a nightmare.

“May I present her majesty, Miss Chell, Queen of Excellent Hair.” Alex announced, hands on her hips.

Her dad came to look as mom stood up from the rug where they’d all been sitting in front of the sofa. He looked in silence for the briefest moment, taking in the braids and the delicate wisps Alex had pulled free to frame mom’s face. Then he swooped her into a sudden and enthusiastic kiss.

Without thinking, Sophie covered Alex’s eyes as a joke, then stopped, realizing.

“Bleugh.” Alex said seriously, sticking her tongue out and accidentally licking Sophie’s hand.

“Gross! Alex.”

“Sorry,” Alex apologized, her tone clearly sorry for the blunder. “But it can’t be grosser than _that_.”

Mom and dad broke off for a second, glanced at each other, then looked over at the two of them.

“But Alex, how is there anything for you to be grossed out at?”

Alex made a chuffing noise. “I have _ears_. And it sounds gross. I don’t think I’ll ever do it.” She said grandly.

Dad’s face took on a wry look. “You know, there may come a time when you don’t mind so much.”

Alex paused at this and seemed to think it over for a moment.

“Nah. Still gross.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More fun fluff. Part of In Another Life references Alex having her hair braided, thanks to a certain friend down in the labs. I enjoyed that little detail so much, I thought I'd carry it forward. Hope y'all enjoyed. (Also, did you catch the reference? Princess Bride will forever be one of my favorites. :)


	9. Everlasting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick warning, this story is a bit darker than usual, with some elements of horror. As per usual, I don't write graphic descriptions of anything, but I thought I'd mention it in case it's really not your thing. Also, I do not own Tuck Everlasting, or any of the quotes therein.
> 
> (Also, yes, I'm working on Of Ratts and Men. Currently I've got a beta reader and I'm hard at work on getting the plot straightened out. Not too straightened though, since in my humble opinion, the best stories have a twist. :)

* * *

_“…life’s to enjoy yourself, isn’t it? What else is it good for? That’s what_ I _say._

_And you and me, we could have a good time that never, never stopped. Wouldn’t that be something?”_

_—Tuck Everlasting_

* * *

She’d never thought much of it at the time. So much of Her commentary was a blur of callous, _meaningless_ language.

_“—well, more of a medical_ experiment _…”_

None of it mattered to her. She only cared about the present moment—the next jump, the next puzzle, the next bit of tricky timing she’d have to manage. It was if the past and future no longer existed in her small world, if they’d ever even been there to begin with. Nothing remained beyond the ever-changing present minute.

_“Seeing as you burned yourself on the hard-light bridge in the previous chamber, my protocol requires me to remind you that certain elements of this test may cause side effects, such as hair loss, third-degree burns, death, and slight nausea.”_

Chell entered the chamber, glancing around, sizing up the element of the puzzle, and utterly ignoring her.

 _“The Aperture Science Computer-aided Enrichment Center would like to remind you at this time that the best method to avoid injuries in hazardous conditions is to avizzz-zzzoid-erzzz-z-z—”_ the hateful voice cut out in a fuzz of static and harsh, grating sound.

_“I’m sorry, I’m not sure what happened to those instructional files. Oh well. I’m sure you’ll be fine. Continue testing.”_

Chell was far too beyond caring to roll her eyes. She simply took in a breath, calmed her nerves, and shot off around the chamber. In the blink of an eye, she portaled up to a higher surface to get a higher viewpoint and survey the elements of the chamber blocked from her point of view by the several walls scattered around the chamber.

A sea of sterile greys and whites lay before her, crisp and precise and about as interesting as an instruction booklet for putting together furniture. To her practiced eyes, it was simply another map to be read, deciphered, and followed to yet another glass elevator.

Having absorbed the maze of chamber elements, she stepped back to stew over the puzzle. Surely she should begin with the cube dispenser in the corner, but it was blocked by a moat, so perhaps she could reach it if she—

Her ears caught the sound of whirring machinery and—

“Hello-o?”

“Target acquired.”

—too late. She felt a sharp sting as a bullet struck her in the leg, thankfully protected by her long-fall boots. The second bullet stung a little higher—too high. She stumbled out of the turrets’ line of fire, and her boot caught the edge of the platform and she was falling—

It was alright, alright, just keep calm because her boots would catch her—

But she wasn’t going to hit the floor. She was going to land in the sludge first. There was nothing she could do, she couldn’t make it—but no! She _had_ to make it! She simply had to! Because if she didn’t, she was—

Raging, burning, _crushing_ pain that seared into every nerve ending until the acidic sludge had consumed them and then she felt nothing. For the first time in her short life, in the short life she remembered, she screamed. The sludge seeped into her skin, her bones, her skull, devouring, devouring, devouring…

Nothing.

* * *

She’d never heard the lunatic scream. Grunts of pain, even, had been rare and few-between. Of anyone, She would know, since She had hard data recordings of every single instance. Only as a matter of data collection, of course. She’d had the sneaking suspicion since the lunatic first woke up that she might be refusing to speak out of pure spite.

She perused the data idly, though it told her nothing of interest. Of all human communication, grunting was the epitome of crudeness, and at its core, it was nothing more than a human clumsily expelling air with perhaps the slightest touch of emotional inflection. No, what she needed from the lunatic—to prove she had any sort of capacity for speech—was at least one word.

And She got it, though quite in the most unexpected fashion. A sudden increase in volume input from the hidden microphones in her test chamber alerted Her attention to the lunatic again.

And much as She would bury the very thought under a mile of concrete—the sight that met her metaphorical eyes made her as nauseous as she could feel as cold, unfeeling metal. 

She had fallen into the acid feet first, and the sludge had made quick work of her.

But not before she had let out the most blood-curdling, bone-chilling, soul-crushing scream She had ever heard. And She had heard many screams in Her vast experience.

Some small, insignificant part of Her recoiled at the sight, horror-struck with the deepest, most utter revulsion. With the slightest intention, the panels at the roof of the chamber retracted and She sent down a multiservice claw. But the lunatic was…in pieces. Pieces that dissolved at the touch of the multiservice claw, leaving acrid particles that chewed tiny wormholes in the metal.

She was dead.

The lunatic murderer was dead.

Something soft and squishy reared its head inside Her mind, making itself known. It was screaming, or crying perhaps. The trivial details of what exactly it was doing didn’t matter to Her; the point was neither of those things would be tolerated within a mile radius of Her person. She had said as much to another utterly unmemorable test subject, seconds before crushing him between two plates. She quashed the horrible squishy thing with much the same speed, revulsion, and enthusiasm as a human would go about crushing a roach with a shoe. In her mind, it gave up the ghost with a satisfying _squelch_ , before disappearing without a trace. With a sense of freshness that a sane person might associate with cleaning out a junk drawer, rather than the extinguishing of an entity that may or may not have been able to feel pain, She put all thought of the squishy thing out of Her mind.

She had work to do.

* * *

Everything hurt. It was not the kind of hurt that she knew inherently to be good, like the ache of her muscles being testing and growing stronger. It was the kind of hurt that drove a panicky stake through her heart, ratcheting her heartbeat up to an insane pace as she desperately tried to convince the wild animal in her brain to _keep calm and don’t panic_. 

Panicking never did any good anyways. It wasted time and energy, and besides, emotional displays were for people surrounded by empathetic humans capable of offering support, be it emotional or physical. There was no purpose to physical displays when your only audience was a personage of callous disregard for human life with a penchant for causing immeasurable suffering.

Chell opened her eyes, the pain a dull sort of background ache that took no notice of what she did. Opening her eyes and even sitting upright did nothing to increase it and nothing to lessen it. How odd. In her experience, straining her muscles too harshly—or in one case, burning her bare skin on a light bridge—was worsened by so much as breathing in the injury’s direction. Yet the pain simply persisted in a plain, mundane sort of throbbing.

She had sat up, and looked down. Once again, she was clothed in a jumpsuit, long-sleeved and long-legged this time, with the ends of her pants tucked into a pair of long-fall boots. She was inclined to believe that they were not the same pair, given as these were a fresh, creamy white with crisp black lines, no longer marred by scorches or scratches or dents from bullets. Swinging her legs over the edge of the medical examining table she found herself on, she slid to the floor, her ears perking at the familiar sound of her boots’ springy heels clicking against a hard-tiled floor.

Flipping her hands over and flexing the fingers, she examined the skin. Unbroken and without scarring. The pain—or rather, the memory of it—came roaring back in a fierce rage, and she shivered, unable to approach the red-hot memory. She tried to tiptoe around it, but it was difficult, given how _unignorable_ it was, squatting like a grumpy toad in the center of her brain.

Her fingers felt… _good_. She flexed them in a sequence, one after the other, watching the miracle of her own fingers curling and uncurling with a uniform motion. As she watched her fingers, she slowly began to move them independently. How odd, that she should be able to move her pinkie and ring finger so independently of each other. Perhaps part of her recovery involved some dramatic improvement in her dexterity. Though knowing Aperture, it would most likely come back to bite her in some way or another. For now, however, it was not her main concern.

_"Oh good. You’re finally awake. I suppose I can hold off on adding ‘excessively lazy’ to your file. It still says ‘lazy’, of course, but at least it doesn’t say ‘excessively lazy’.”_

_“_ Chell flinched at the sound of the voice, quick to mask her fear with a blank, dead-eyed look that had become a staple of her facial expression arsenal. She nearly snorted but managed to rein in the instinct at the last second. An arsenal was a bit of a stretch, at the very least. To be honest, all her expressions at this point were merely slight variations of the same look: passive glaring.

_“You know, you dying taught me a valuable lesson today.”_

Chell stiffened. _Dying?_ She didn’t die. At least, not that she knew—

_“No matter how murderous or destructive you may be, you’re still human. And humans are fragile.”_

Chell felt her body all over, patting down her jumpsuit. She _was_ alright, wasn’t she?

_“And as long as you are human, there is the possibility that you will be unable to go on with testing…so I’ve come up with a solution that I honestly think works out best for one of both of us.”_

Chell’s hands shook. What did She _do_? With unsteady hands, she felt her own skin, rolling up her sleeves. She was warm and alive and—

Rolling up her sleeve, she was met with the gleam of metal. Beyond her forearm, covered with a very convincing sleeve of electronic skin, her arm was wholly, utterly metal, gleaming in the fluorescent lights. Frantic now, she gripped the edge of her “skin” and peeled back, not caring if she shredded the rubber-like substance.

The skin of her hand came off like a sweaty glove and dropped to the floor, unheeded. Horror-struck, she held her hand up to the light, as if the better angle of lighting would make and difference at what she was seeing with her own two eyes.

She was no longer human.

_“So now, there’s nothing to stop us testing together, for the rest of time.”_

Chell was motionless for a moment, then she hurled the rubber glove of skin at the camera.

She sat and wept.


	10. First Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even with a sister like Sophie as a trailblazer, I figure Alex would make a bit of a stir in Eaden after arriving. Just some cute family/friendship fluff. Hope you enjoy and with that, read on!

Alex was shaking when Chell approached the fourth-grade classroom. As it happened, it also functioned as the first, second, and third grade classroom as well, so Ms. Harris, one of Eaden’s two teachers, didn’t think there would be much issue settling Alex into the appropriate level of schooling.

From what Chell could gather, she was a fairly intelligent child, and she had a decent memory. She would be fine on that front.

It was the other children she had to worry about. Alex suddenly hugged her around the waist, squeezing tight with a frightened grasp. Chell tried to release her fingers, but the younger girl only squeezed tighter, burying her head into Chell’s t-shirt with a whimper.

“Chell?” The classroom door opened, and Ms. Harris stood erect at the entrance like a queen on a parapet, looking down upon her subjects. She was not the friendliest woman, but she gave a mild sort of smile and beckoned for Alex to come in.

Chell nudged Alex. She turned a tear-stained face up to stare in Chell’s direction.

“You won’t leave me here, will you? You’ll come back right?” She begged.

Chell sighed, realizing what this was about, and kneeled a little to reach Alex’s height. She took the younger girl by the shoulders and spoke softly.

“Yes. I’ll come back.”

* * *

Alex felt herself prodded and pushed into the room by cold, unfamiliar hands. A crowd of thoughts, curious and coldly unfamiliar greeted her. Wincing, she threw up her guard to block the thoughts, but not before several slipped in—

_Who’s that?_

_What’s wrong with her eyes?_

_What’s wrong with her hair? Why’s it so white?_

Alex swallowed.

“Class, this is Alexandria Newell—

-

“—and she’s been adopted by the Newells, so she’ll be joining us this year.”

Thomas looked up and stared. Alexandria leaned over quietly and whispered something to Ms. Harris.

“Right, she’d also like to be called Alex, so let’s make her welcome, yes?”

Murmurs of assent, Thomas’s among them. He watched silently as Alex walked quietly to a seat. One hand lightly tapped the edges of desks, feeling her way, as she tried to find her seat.

Thomas opened his mouth. There was an empty seat not far from him—right next to him, to be exact—but he thought better of it and closed his mouth. Alex bumped a desk on her journey and flinched. The occupant said nothing beyond a simple _watch where you’re going_ , before realizing and going very, _very_ quiet.

She sat next to him, slumping in her desk. She looked…unusual, to say the least. Unlike anything he’d seen in Eaden before. Her hair was bleach white—old-person-white—like the old lady Miss Elizabeth at the other end of town. Her eyes, also like Miss Elizabeth, were pale, wandering through the room aimlessly.

“Now, this is a new year, with new faces and new work to do. I hope you’ll do your best. I’m going to pass around the textbooks. Some of you will have to share, and I don’t want to hear any bickering. Please share with your desk mate, and follow along as I read chapter one aloud.”

Thomas watched Alex, carefully noting what she did. She didn’t twitch at the sound of the teacher’s voice, and her hands stayed listless in her lap. Ms. Harris placed a book gently on their shared desk—really just a spare table with a long bench for them to sit on—and murmured something quietly to Alex before moving on.

Thomas reached for the textbook, and Alex shifted a little, turning her head towards the soft noise. She blinked once, very slowly, and turned away again.

“Can you read?” The words slipped out before he could stop them.

Alex turned back towards him, her expression blank. “Yes. Not a book like that, though.” She didn’t elaborate further, and he wasn’t sure what to say to something like that.

“Should I turn the pages, then?”

Alex nodded, without a single additional word during the rest of class.

* * *

Recess came soon, but not soon enough. Thomas quickly raced out the minute the bell rang, perhaps a little before. Finding his favorite tree—the tallest one in the patch of beaten-down grass that served as the recess playground—and climbed it with ease. His practiced hands found the branches almost without looking, and he clambered to the top in a matter of minutes.

From his high perch, he could see the whole schoolyard, sprawled out before him in dusty brown scattered with splotches of green. A flash of white caught his eye, and he spotted Alex again. She walked out slowly, lagging behind the mass of younger children, and she sat quietly on the worn bench near the door of the barn that was the school.

An itch, sudden and unexpected, snagged his attention for the slightest moment, and he turned to see a ladybug crawling on his arm. Slowly, carefully, he listed the bug from his arm and set it on a nearby branch. When he looked back again, Alex was suddenly surrounded by a crowd of kids.

“Where did you come from?”

“Did you come from New Detroit?”

“My mom says only little old ladies have white hair—are you a hundred years old or something?”

“Why are your eyes so…funny?”

Alex shuffled her feet, clearly uneasy. Thomas stayed riveted to the spot, watching the scene unfold. It only took a second before Daniel Abernathy began waving a hand in front of her face to see if her funny-looking eyes really were blind or not. He got a little too close, and—

_SMACK._

Alex cried out and put her hands over her head to protect her already injured face. This wasn’t so strange. He’d gotten smacked several times on the playground—never really a fight, just roughhousing—and it had hurt, but after a minute the pain would fade and he could go on playing.

What _was_ strange was the fact that when Alex put her hands over her face to protect it, all the kids around her clutched their faces, as if _they_ had been smacked themselves. Like the time he had switched on a light in the cellar, the kids scattered like cockroaches. All except Daniel, who kept waving his hand even as he held his face, until his friend pulled him away.

Alex sat alone again. Soon enough, the school bell—an old cow bell somebody had found lying around—rang out with a clattering sort of sound and the kids ran back in. Alex waited quietly, unnoticed, only going in when everyone else had already gone.

Thomas swung down from the tree in shower of leaves and followed.

* * *

“How was school?” Thomas walked, kicking a small stone along as he went. He looked up at his father, at the red hair he had inherited and the green eyes he hadn’t, and he nodded with a smile.

“That’s good. I heard there was a new kid—the Newells’ other daughter?”

Another nod. The stone had skipped a little too far and landed in a ditch. He began kicking another stone. This one was smooth and round. He stopped to pick it up and placed it in his pocket.

“Grandma Emilie is coming for dinner tonight. So don’t get too muddy, okay?”

“Okay.”

* * *

Thomas liked Grandma Emilie. She was good friends with Mrs. Newell, and she knew almost everything about everybody in town. And she talked. A lot. But Thomas didn’t mind. It meant that he didn’t have to talk nearly as much.

But his interest perked up a little when Grandma Emilie mentioned Alex.

“Oh yes, precious little thing. Ellie and Sophie have quite taken to her—such sweet girls. Course, if I didn’t know better, I’d say she came from the northeast.”

“Not from New Detroit? I’ve heard they’re still managing all the children displaced by the war.” Thomas’s father commented mildly, twirling spaghetti around his fork.

“The good Lord knows that’s true enough. But no, I don’t think so. There’s something of an _air_ around her. Still, where else could she have come from?”

“Well, she’s here now, and the Newells will be good for her. Seems like such a skittish little thing.” Thomas’s mother said with a sort of finality, as if she were tired of the subject.

“Well yes, of course. No one’s disputing that, dearie. But still, one can’t help but notice.”

“Mm—on the subject of New Detroit, have you heard from my brother? Apparently he’s opened a second shop.”

“Really? Well, I knew he was a businessman from birth, that one. Did I ever tell you the story—”

And on it went. Thomas finished his spaghetti and asked to be excused. He wanted to catch a few more fireflies for his jar before it got cold again. His mother nodded, and he skipped out into the late summer night.

* * *

“Why do you go by Alex?” He chanced the question when Alex sat down at their shared desk.

Alex looked over at him, a little surprised. Thomas hadn’t said much to her since the day on the playground on that first day, and she hadn’t said much either. But she answered anyway.

“I don’t like ‘Alexandria’.”

“Why—” he hesitated, “—why not?”

Alex turned to him. Something flashed across her features, something too fast to catch.

“Mean people like to call me that. Nice people like to call me Alex. My—my friends call me Alex too.”

“Do you want to be friends?” Thomas asked.

“Yes, please.” And for the first time, Alex smiled. That smile glowed, lighting up the entire room.

Thomas smiled back.

* * *

“Thomas, why do you talk to her?” Daniel asked one day, as they sat in a lumpy group out in the yard, eating the lunches their mothers and fathers had packed for them. Alex sat, but not entirely by herself. Being Mrs. Newell’s daughter, she had the advantage of some of the best-tasting lunch items, which were a high-value trading commodity in the yard. Kayla and Tammy were sitting by her, trying to weasel their way into a slice of raisin bread, but considering they only had a sad daub of hummus and some stale crackers (it was clean-out-the-cabinet day at their house), it seemed unlikely they would get it.

After a minute, they shifted and went to sit over the by the gaggle of girls at the other end of the yard. Alex didn’t seem to mind; if anything, she seemed relieved not to be so closely observed as she nibbled absentmindedly at her raisin bread. Maybe in a minute Thomas would go offer her his celery sticks. He hated celery, but Alex seemed to like everything and anything—even _brussel sprouts_. He couldn’t fathom why, but if it meant getting rid of his unwanted celery sticks, he might try it.

“Thomas?”

Thomas looked up at Daniel and shook himself back into focus. “Right, sorry. I dunno, she sits at the same desk as me. I kinda haf’to.”

The older kids came onto the playground, coldly ignorant of the small fry as they sat to lounge in the sacred spot under the tree. No little kid under ten sat there—not unless they had an older sibling to invite them, and even then, that was doubtful.

But Alex had an older sister, Sophie, who was almost done with school. Thomas envied her. He would rather climb trees and catch worms and fish in the pond than sit listening to Ms. Harris’s voice for hours and hours. Sophie called to her younger sister, and Alex’s face lit up at the sound of her voice. She quickly ran over.

“My mom says they’re both kinda weird.”

Thomas turned his attention back to Daniel, who was squishing his bread into a compact, sweaty ball. Examining his work, he quickly shoved the whole thing in his mouth. Thomas giggled, making Daniel giggle, which nearly made him choke. He managed to get control of himself and swallowed.

“What kinda weird?” Thomas asked.

“I dunno. Did you ever hear about when Sophie fought Sally Vance a long, _long_ time ago?”

“No. What happened?”

Daniel leaned in conspiratorially. “My cousin says he was there when it all went down, and he swore he saw Sophie’s eyes go _blue_.”

“Blue?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Daniel waved his hands, knocking a pretzel to the ground, “like a robot.”

“A robot?”

“I bet she’s secretly a robot.”

“Huh.”

Suddenly there was a disturbance on the other side of the playground. Both Sophie and Alex were standing up, and Alex had the most murderous look of anger on her face.

“What did you call Mr. Wheatley?” She asked, so quiet Thomas almost couldn’t hear from his and Daniel’s spot. But there was no mistaking her anger. Her eyes flashed blue.

“Don’t ever call him that. _Ever_.” Sophie said fiercely, and she took Alex’s arm and walked away. The younger girl was reluctant to go, but suddenly her face turned complacent and walked away with Sophie peacefully.

Minutes later, the biggest beetle Thomas had ever seen fell from the tree right into Sally Vance’s sandwich. She screamed, though he couldn’t imagine why; beetles were cool. She and her friends scattered from the spot and sat in the hot sun for the rest of the lunch period.

It was that exact moment that Thomas decided he rather liked being friends with Alex.

* * *

“Thomas what are you doing?” His mother sounded horrified as he clung to a branch. He turned his head to look at her, confused by her expression. This particular tree wasn’t any higher than he had ever climbed, but then again, he _was_ doing something he’d never really done before.

He was out to catch a bird.

“Thomas! Don’t go near that nest. Leave the little birds alone.”

“Oh I’m not gonna bother the little birds.” He knew well enough that baby birds needed their momma bird. He was going for another bird, several branches to the left of the nest.

Shoving a fist into his pocket, he pulled out a handful of seed, and whistled to the bird above him. The birds had become familiar with him and his whistles. He used to be really bad at whistling, but he’d practiced and practiced until the birds would stop and tilt their heads at him. After a few more months of practice, they eventually associated the whistles with food and would come quickly.

This bird was no exception, and it chirped merrily and came to Thomas. He gently stroked the bird’s feathers as it eagerly pecked at the seed in his hands. He waited until the bird had finished, then carefully put his hands around the bird so it couldn’t fly off. Slowly, carefully, he climbed down with one hand—no easy feat.

He hit the ground, carefully holding the bird close. It chirped a little, a bit annoyed with him, but he took out some more feed and the small bird forgot its annoyance and began eating again.

He had a friend to see.

* * *

Chell answered the door when the knock came. She wasn’t sure who would be knocking on a lazy Sunday afternoon, but she got up and opened the door to find Thomas Snider standing at the door with a _bird_ in his hands of all things.

“Is Alex here?”

Chell stood for a second, taken aback. From what she’d gathered, Alex’s first few weeks of school had gone poorly, since many of the children had been a bit put off by her curious appearance and shy demeanor. Not to mention, she had unfortunately taken up Sophie’s ongoing feud with Sally Vance, and they’d had a confrontation a few days earlier that had left Alex sitting crying in her room for at least an hour.

“Sophie?” Chell called back, and her eldest came to the door.

“Who’s—oh, hi Thomas. You looking for Alex?”

“Yes.” Thomas said, his expression never changing.

“I’ll go get her.” Sophie offered, and she ran off back into the house.

Alex came to the door moments later, and Thomas’s face cracked the slightest bit in a smile.

“Hold out your hands.” Thomas commanded, and Alex obeyed.

There was a muffled chirp as Thomas adjusted his bird to hold it with one hand. With the other, he sprinkled Alex’s hands with seeds. Slowly, gently, he hovered the bird over her hands. After a minute of chirping, the bird eventually began to eat, pecking quietly at Alex’s hands in search of seed.

Alex flinched, but she kept her hands still as Thomas slowly put the bird in her hands. As the fluff grazed her fingers, Alex’s face broke into a smile to rival the one her raisin bread had produced. She gasped, and hesitantly, she got one hand free, hovering it over the bird’s feathers.

The bird chirped at her hand, then returned to feeding. Alex carefully curved a finger and stroked the bird’s feathers. For a magical moment, the bird sat obligingly and let her stroke it. If it was possible, Alex’s smile glowed even brighter.

Then the bird finished the seed and it flew off. Alex’s face fell, but Thomas quickly cut in:

“Don’t worry. They hafta get used to you first. I’ll come back later and show you how to get them to come. See you later, Alex.”

Thomas left, with no more fanfare than he had come.

Alex came back inside, her face still alight with the residue of a smile. She went into the room she shared with Sophie, and Chell could hear the sounds of muted conversation as the girls began to talk.

“So who was that then?” Wheatley called from the sofa, looking up from a book he’d been reading. He was still on the same page from several minutes earlier, when she’d been sitting next to him, so she gathered he’d been pretending to read while he listened to the conversation at the front door.

“Thomas Snider.” Chell said simply, and sat next to him. He held out an arm, and she snuggled close, feeling the affects of the drowsy afternoon sunshine streaming through the living-room windows.

“Did he really have a _bird_ with him?”

“A wild one, yes.”

A beat. Chell suddenly looked back up at Wheatley’s face to see a bit of a scheming face there.

“Don’t get any ideas, they’re only ten.”

“Well, you know, Alex’s actually nine, but you never know. It could happen.”

Chell laid back down and let out a tired sigh. “I love you, but don’t meddle.”

“What me? _Never_.”


End file.
